Georgina Hale obituary

Character actor known for a host of TV roles and for her award-winning work in the films of Ken Russell

Georgina Hale obituary

In 2010, Kevin Younger began an article in the Guardian with the words: “Recognise the faces but can’t place the names?” Among the list of Britain’s top 10 great unsung television character actors that followed was Georgina Hale. “This slinky, adenoidal, estuarine glamour-puss oozed naughtiness in some interesting films and some classic television in the 70s,” he wrote. “She has latterly cornered the market in nouveau riche languor and middle-aged decadence.”

Although most of her screen roles were on television, Hale, who has died aged 80, was a favourite of the flamboyant film director Ken Russell, who once said she was “an actress of such sensitivity that she can make the hair rise on your arms”.

She was at her best for Russell in his fictionalised musical biopic Mahler (1974), portraying the wife of the Austrian composer Gustav Mahler, played by Robert Powell. “It is Georgina Hale’s playing of Alma which gives the film most of its vitality,” observed the Daily Mirror critic Arthur Thirkell.

Alma, Mahler’s musically ambitious wife, joins him on a train journey through Austria, which is punctuated by flashbacks to key events in his life. This stifling of her creativity is symbolised in the opening scene, as Gustav dreams of his wife rolling around on rocks, naked and trying to set herself free from the translucent cocoon that surrounds her. Later, he dreams of his death and burial, with Alma leading the funeral procession, then stripping for a Nazi lover.